100th anniversary of the Romanian state

Celebrations on Saturday marking the 100th anniversary of Romania's union with the former Hungarian Province of Transylvania were marred by protests. With this territorial enlargement after World War I the country increased its size by roughly one third. Commentators take a negative view of the past 100 years.

A country ruled by crooks

There's no reason to celebrate, the news website G4Media.ro stresses:

“We have never been as disgusted and pessimistic about our future as we are today. Never have we had less faith in our opportunities or the fate of our country than we do at the end of these 100 years, half of which we lost in the darkness of communism. Because never before has our country been ruled by a more execrable bunch of illiterate crooks than it is today. ... They weren't appointed by external forces as they were in 1946 [when Romania was ruled by a Soviet-backed communist government]. They were elected by the people - or what remains of them.”

A century of decline

Transylvania's becoming part of Romania is one of the biggest tragedies of the 20th century, the conservative website Mandiner believes:

“1918 was one of the few historic moments in which a less-developed country colonised a more civilised one, only to drag it down into its Balkan quagmire in less than a century. As a bonus there were decades of national communism under Ceaușescu. Transylvanian Hungarians, Saxons, Jews, Roma and Romanians suffered all this together. Now they have a mission: in the next 100 years they must patch together and unite on all levels what was torn apart in 1918 and 1920. For just a moment, let's all be Transylvanians.”